First Degree

The progress of higher education in Liberia, as conveyed in a mailer dated March 30 from TIME'S correspondent on the Gold Coast, Henry B. Cole:

"Last week came news that since its establishment in 1862, Liberia College was going to confer its first meritorious degree in Literature. To Holland Tombekai Dempster, B.A. ('35), a short, youngish, thin-lipped Liberian, went the first Master of Literature degree for post-graduate work.

"Besides sitting to a final test of 75 questions on world literature, Rolland Dempster's book, Liberia's Contribution to World Literature (now under consideration by Doubleday, Doran & Co.) is something Liberians ought to be proud of. But the ugly fact is, Liberians are proud of Liberia College as a structural entity. . . . It is a grade school, a high school, a college, a university all in one, one in all, crowded in a barrack-looking building rented from the American Methodist Mission.

"In a bank in Boston, Mass., a million dollars lie to the credit of this college. It has been there for so long, nobody seems to think of it again. Reason: Liberia College is on one side of the Atlantic, and its Board of Governors is on the other side. The Board is composed of Americans who have Liberian Education at heart. Despite this fact, they will not allow the Liberians to touch a cent until they . . . agree to run the college on Modern Educational lines. . . . But the Liberian highbrows said the college must run according to Liberian ideals.

"Since 1862, the college has given away about 200 B.A. degrees to graduates, who never exceed 12 in any one year. . . . Besides Arts, it offers no other scientific course; nothing mechanical or technical. But Liberians do not mind. To them it is their Harvard, Oxford, Sorbonne or Heidelberg, so long as every year the big political bosses get their annual Ph.D.s and M.A.s, honour causaris. . . "

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